Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (851 page)

After Jesus, being sent back by Herod, was returned upon his hands, Pilate, according to Luke, once more called together the Sanhedrists and the people, and declared, alleging in his support the judgment of Herod as accordant with his own, his wish to dismiss Jesus with chastisement; for which purpose he might avail himself of the custom of releasing a prisoner at the feast of the passover.
^‡
This circumstance, which is somewhat abridged in Luke, is more fully exhibited in the other Evangelists, especially in Matthew. As the privilege to entreat the release of a prisoner belonged to the people, Pilate, well knowing that Jesus was persecuted by the rulers out of jealousy, sought to turn to his advantage the better disposition of the people towards him; and in order virtually to oblige them to free Jesus, whom, partly out of mockery of the Jews, partly

^*
Schleiermacher, über den Lukas, s. 291
.

^†
Dial. cum Tryph. 103.

^‡
It is doubted whether this custom, of which we should have known nothing but for the N. T., was of Roman or Jewish origin; comp. Fritzsche and Paulus, in loc., and Baur, über die ursprungliche Bedeutung des Passahfestes, u. s. f., Tüb. Zeitschr. 1. Theol. 1832, 1, s. 94
.
to deter them from his execution as degrading to themselves, he named the Messiah or King of the Jews, he reminded them that their choice lay between him and a
notable prisoner,
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, Barabbas* whom John designates as a
robber,
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, but Mark and Luke as one who was imprisoned for insurrection and murder. This plan however failed, for the people, suborned, as the two first Evangelists observe, by their rulers, with one voice desired the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus.

As a circumstance which had especial weight with Pilate in favour of Jesus, and moved him to make the proposal relative to Barabbas as urgently as possible, it is stated by Matthew that while the procurator sat on his tribunal, his wife,
^†
in consequence of a disturbing dream, sent to him a warning to incur no responsibility in relation to that just man (xxvii. 19). Not only Paulus, but even Olshausen, explains this dream as a natural result of what Pilate’s wife might have heard of Jesus and of his capture on the preceding evening; to which may be added as an explanatory conjecture, the notice of the
Evangelium Nicodemi,
that she was
pious,
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, and
judaizing,
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.
^‡
Nevertheless, as constantly in the New Testament, and particularly in the Gospel of Matthew, dreams are regarded as a special dispensation from heaven, so this assuredly in the opinion of the narrator happened
non sine numine;
and hence it should be possible to conceive a motive and an object for the dispensation. If the dream were really intended to prevent the death of Jesus, taking the orthodox point of view, in which this death was necessary for the salvation of man, we must be led to the opinion of some of the ancients, that it may have been the devil who suggested that dream to the wife of the procurator, in order to hinder the propitiatory death;
^§
if on the contrary, the dream were not intended to prevent the death of Jesus, its object must have been limited to Pilate or his wife. But as far as Pilate was concerned, so late a warning could only aggravate his guilt, without sufficing to deter him from the step already half taken; while that his wife was converted by means of this dream, as many have supposed,|| is totally unattested by history or tradition, and such an object is not intimated in the narrative. But, as the part which Pilate himself plays in the evangelical narrative is such as to exhibit the blind

^*
According to one reading, the full name of this man was
Jesus Barabbas,
which we mention here merely because Olshausen finds it “remarkable.”
Bar Abba
meaning
Son of the father,
Olshausen exclaims: All that was essential in the Saviour appears in the murderer as caricature! and he quotes as applicable to this case the verse :
ludit in humanis divina potentia rebus.
For our own part, we can only see in this idea of Olshausen’s a
lusus humanæ impotentiæ.

^†
In the
Evang. Nicodemi
and in later ecclesiastical historians she is called
Procula
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Comp. Thilo. Cod. Apocr. N. T., p. 522, Paulus, exeg. Handb., 2
,
b, s. 640 f.

^‡
Cap. II. s,
520, ap. Thilo.

^§
Ignat. ad Philippens. iv. :
(The devil) terrifies the woman, troubling her in her dreams, and endeavour: to put a stop to the things of the cross.
The Jews in the Evang. Nicodemi, c. II. p. 524, explain the dream as a result of the magic arts of Jesus:
He is a magician — see, he has sent messages in a dream to thy wife.

^||
E.g. Theophylact, vid. Thilo, p.
523.
hatred of the fellow-countrymen of Jesus in contrast with the impartial judgment of a Gentile; so his wife is made to render a testimony to Jesus, in order that, not only out of the mouth of
babes and sucklings
(Matt. xxi. 16), but also out of the mouth of a weak woman, praise might be prepared for him; and to increase its importance it is traced to a significant dream. To give this an appearance of probability, similar instances are adduced from profane history of dreams which have acted as presentiments and warnings before a sanguinary catastrophe * but the more numerous are these analogous cases, the more is the suspicion excited that as the majority of these; so also the dream in our evangelical passage, may have been fabricated after the event, for the sake of heightening its tragical effect.

When the Jews, in reply to the repeated questions of Pilate, vehemently and obstinately demand the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus, the two intermediate Evangelists represent him as at once yielding to their desire; but Matthew first interposes a ceremony and a colloquy (xxvii. 24 ff.). According to him Pilate calls for water, washes his hands before the people, and declares himself innocent of the blood of this just man. The washing of the hands, as a protestation of purity from the guilt of shedding blood, was a custom specifically Jewish, according to Deut. xxi. 6 f.
^†
It has been thought improbable that the Roman should have here intentionally imitated this Jewish custom, and hence it has been contended, that to any one who wished so solemnly to declare his innocence nothing would more readily suggest itself than the act of washing the hands.
^‡
But that an individual, apart from any allusion to a known usage, should invent extemporaneously a symbolical act, or even that he should merely fall in with the custom of a foreign nation, would require him to be deeply interested in the fact which he intends to symbolize. That Pilate, however, should be deeply interested in attesting his innocence of the execution of Jesus, is not so probable as that the Chnstians should have been deeply interested in thus gaining a testimony to the innocence of their Messiah whence there arises a suspicion that perhaps Pilate’s act of washing his hands owes its origin to them alone. This conjecture is confirmed, when we consider the declaration with which Pilate accompanies his symbolical act:
I am innocent of the blood of this just man,
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For that the judge should publicly and emphatically designate as a
just man,
&acatoc, one whom he was nevertheless delivering over to the severest mnflic tionof the law, — this even Paulus finds so contradictory that he here, contrary to his usual mode of exposition, supposes that the narrator himself expresses in these words his own interpretation of Pilate’s symbolical act. It is surprising that he is not

^*
Vid. Paulus and Kuinöl, in loc. They especially adduce the dream of Cæsar’s wife the night before his assassination,
^†
Comp. Sota, viii. 6.

^‡
Fritzsche, in Matth., p. 808.also struck by the equal improbability of the answer which is attributed to the Jews on this occasion. After Pilate has declared himself guiltless of the blood of Jesus, and by the addition:
see ye to it,
has laid the responsibility on the Jews, it is said in Matthew that
all the people
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, cried:
His blood be on us and on our children,
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But this is obviously spoken from the point of view of the Christians, who in the miseries which shortly after the death of Jesus fell with continually increasing weight on the Jewish nation, saw nothing else than the payment of the debt of blood which they had incurred by the crucifixion of Jesus: so that this whole episode, which is peculiar to the first gospel, is in the highest degree suspicious.

According to Matthew and Mark, Pilate now caused Jesus to be scourged, preparatory to his being led away to crucifixion. Here the scourging appears to correspond to the
virgis cædere,
which according to Roman usage preceded the
securi percutere,
and to the scourging of slaves prior to crucifixion.* In Luke it has a totally different character. While in the two former Evangelists it is said:
When he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified,
;
in Luke, Pilate repeatedly (v. 16 and 22) makes the proposal :
having chastised him I will let him go,
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i. e. while there the scourging has the appearance of a mere accessory of the crucifixion, here it appears to be intended as a substitute for the crucifixion: Pilate wishes by this chastisement to appease the hatred of the enemies of Jesus, and induce them to desist from demanding his execution. Again, while in Luke the scourging does not actually take place, — because the Jews will in nowise accede to the repeated proposal of Pilate: in John the latter causes Jesus to be scourged, exhibits him to the people with the purple robe and the crown of thorns and tries whether his pitiable aspect, together with the repeated declaration of his innocence, will not mollify their embittered minds : this, however, proving also in vain (xix. 1 ff.). Thus there exists a contradiction between the Evangelists in relation to the scourging of Jesus, which is not to be conciliated after the method of Paulus, namely by paraphrasing the words
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in Matthew and Mark thus : Jesus, whom he had already before scourged in order to save him, suffered this in vain, since he was still delivered over to crucifixion. But, acknowledging the difference in the accounts, we must only ask, which of the two has the advantage as regards historical probability? Although it is certainly not to be proved that scourging before crucifixion was a Roman custom admitting no exception: still, on the other hand, it is a purely harmonistic effort to allege, that scourging was only made to precede crucifixion in cases where the punishment was intended to be particularly severe,
^†
and that consequently Pilate,